Labor & Employment Law - U.S. Practice
Employment Contracts, Non-Competition Agreements and Protection of Trade Secrets
We help our clients protect their trade secrets and proprietary business information through preparation of noncompetition, nonsolicitation, and confidentiality agreements. We draft employment agreements for senior executives and managers, as well as executive compensation agreements. We have extensive experience in litigating disputes concerning these matters.
Though our practice is national in scope, our California and Washington DC offices have specialized expertise in addressing the unique regional aspects of this area of the law. Lawyers in our California office have experience handling employment contract, severance agreement and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal courts in California. Our California lawyers have substantial experience in both prosecuting and defending against trade secret, unfair competition, and unfair business practice claims.
Our attorneys are also experienced in representing corporate clients in counseling and litigation involving disputes arising under employment contracts and senior executive severance agreements. Our DC lawyers regularly practice before federal and local courts in the Mid-Atlantic region. Our lawyers have represented both regional and national corporations in litigation over a variety of trade secrets and non-compete issues.
We frequently defend and prosecute actions for emergency injunctive relief based on alleged violations of non-competition and non-solicitation agreements, employee raiding, and misappropriation of trade secrets. In the last year alone, we secured several court victories for our clients and successfully resolved others on the eve of litigation. Our recent experience includes:
- We successfully defended a chemicals manufacturer's new employee in Virginia state court against a competitor's motion for injunctive relief based on alleged misappropriation of trade secrets and the employee's non-competition agreement
- Our lawyers also represented a major housing products supplier against claims that one of its new employees had breached a non-competition agreement and that the company had interfered with a competitor's contractual relations in hiring that employee.
- Our lawyers also have extensive experience with the enforcement of non-competition and no-solicitation provisions in the securities and investment area, having recently represented Merrill Lynch in several actions to enforce non-competition agreements.